EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO • Hacker News Board

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#91

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 9:08 AM UTC

singular wrote: post #17

ahoyhere wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little outside perspective: This is exactly the way it goes with a huge percentage of IT-related projects, in many serious industries. The "Enterprise" is screwed.

I think the key factors are politics and managerial ignorance - there appears to be a general consensus that the most qualified person for the job is the a. biggest suck up and b. the least technically knowledgeable guy/gal available. The problem with having politicals in senior positions is that they will, by their nature, happily abandon honesty + humility - the two most important qualities required by devs/managem…

This is why creating an "advanced technology" or "R&D" unit in the business is very risky. You have to be sure you actually do get the elite, and not just the people who want to play with shiny toys and have the connections to get the plum assgnments.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#92

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 9:37 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #26

rick_2047 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it feels this is so because we have a lot less number of ruins when it comes to IT related projects. Stop construction of a building you have a gigantic half constructed bloat of concrete and bricks. Nothing can be reused (except for the land). Stop construction of a program and you will have some files which can be deleted, all the machines are general purpose and all this can be reused.

I think it is partially because nobody has figured out how to reliably estimate project costs and timetables for software. If houses routinely came with estimates like "We think this house will cost between $200k and $2.6 million to build, and it could be done in between 6 months and 10 years, and at the end it may or may not have a bathroom", every general contractor in the country would be in the unemployment line.…

Ahem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_Building#Ti...

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#93

Post by nl » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 9:53 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #90

nl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. I read it as a strategy for firewalling off a section of the organisation from the useless people, which enables you do enjoy your work.

... For the benefit of the management tier above that allowed the toxic situation to develop in the first place. You can bet that you won't see any of the profits yourself, and they're laughing all the way to the bank, they took their eyes off the ball and still scored.

It's not as simple as that.

Firstly, money isn't everything for most people. Enterprise work can be interesting and rewarding, because you deal with problems that are quite different to the consumer space. If you can escape the toxic situations somehow, that is enough for many people

Secondly, enterprise work can be rewarding financially. Contract rates of $70-$150/hour mean that you make pretty decent money very reliably. Those rates let you hire pretty talented people, and if you can firewall them off from the wider issues in the company you can do pretty good work.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#94

Post by Tamerlin » Fri, Oct 15, 2010, 6:20 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #91

singular wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key factors are politics and managerial ignorance - there appears to be a general consensus that the most qualified person for the job is the a. biggest suck up and b. the least technically knowledgeable guy/gal available. The problem with having politicals in senior positions is that they will, by their nature, happily abandon honesty + humility - the two most important qualities required by devs/managem…

This is why creating an "advanced technology" or "R&D" unit in the business is very risky. You have to be sure you actually do get the elite, and not just the people who want to play with shiny toys and have the connections to get the plum assgnments.

That's very true, and sadly it's also true that most of the time, the people choosing the purported elite are the least qualified to do so.